Introduction
As college students, many of us are faced with a plethora of daily tasks. These tasks might include working long hours, being involved in sports or clubs, or having a strenuous amount of homework from multiple classes. These tasks can be very time-consuming, and they can get in the way of one important and essential aspect of life; sleep. Many people tend to overlook the importance of sleep and its effect on not just our physical wellbeing, but also our mental well-being. Sleep is essential in everyone’s lives as it helps to restore and repair our body, prevents muscle and joint pain, and protects from illness and early death. When we are sleep deprived it can lead to greater anxiety, depression, reduced memory, and mental disorder (Ohlmann and Sullivan, 2009). The recommended amount of sleep for college students (ages 18-25) is between 7-9 hours (Hirshkowitz et. al., 2015). Due to the tasks that college students may be faced with, it’s doubtful that every student gets this amount of sleep every night. This research will focus on the following question: does the amount of sleep in undergraduate students have an effect on their mood?
Literature review
In a journal written by van Heugten, Giesbrecht and Merckelbach (2015) reviewing the effects of sleep loss on undergraduate students, they conducted an experiment on a group of undergraduate students where half of them were intended to have reduced sleep and the other group had a regular night of sleep. Next, they were then cognitively assessed after the experiment (van Heugten et al., 2015). As a result of this 2015 experiment, they concluded that sleep deprivation was associated with mood deterioration.
Ohlmann and Sullivan (2009) studied and discussed the costs of short sleep. This article discussed the importance of sleep, potential health risks due to poor sleep length/quality, and the psychology of sleep (Ohlmann and Sullivan, 2009). Ohlmann states potential indicators of sleep deprivations such as feeling depressed, feeling extreme drowsiness, forgetfulness, etc. Not only does this article provide evidence of emotional risk, but it also provides examples of physical risks. This article outlines various health problems that sleep is associated with such as cancer, digestive problems, heart disease, diabetes, etc. (Ohlmann and Sullivan, 2009). In summary, this article reinforces the importance of sleep in our lives and its great potential for causing harm to not only our physical but our emotional wellbeing.
In an article written by O’Leary, Blysma, and Rottenberg (2017), they studied why poor sleep quality could lead to depression. In their study, they took a sample that included individuals with a range of depressive symptoms. They clinically followed them for over six months and assessed the subjects (O’Leary, Blysma, and Rottenberg, 2017). This study concluded that the subjects who were sleep deprived showed poor emotion-regulation and more depressive symptoms.
Methods
In this research study, the participants include a sample of 6 undergraduate Miami University students. These students will be all freshman with different schedules and responsibilities. In order to prevent bias, the participants will not be told what the expected outcome is. The participants will be asked to keep a sleep journal in which they will record each morning for a week how well they thought they slept and for how long they slept. The participants will then go along with their normal day. At the end of the day, each participant will take a mood assessment inspired by Peleg and Carluccio (2012). Again, the participants will be asked to complete this mood assessment every day for a week. At the end of this week, the sleep journals and the assessments will be collected, and the results will be compared.
Expectations
From this research study, the expectations are as followed. One expectation is that on the days either of the participants slept poorly and not long enough, their moods would be unpleasant. The opposite is also expected; on the day’s participants slept better and longer their moods would be pleasant. This is expected based on the research studies conducted by van Heugten, Giesbrecht and Merckelbach (2015) who concluded that sleep deprivation leads to mood deterioration.
Potential Issues
This experiment could contain many potential issues causing discrepancies in the results. These issues could be caused by response bias, a multitude of lurking variables and daily mishaps. These limitations will be explained below.
- Response Bias. According to Shuttleworth (2009), response bias is when the respondent(s) answer in the direction they think the researcher will want them to answer. In this case, the respondents of this experiment will put that their mood was bad when their sleep was bad even if they were in a good mood. This is a potential issue because the feedback is dishonest which would reduce the credibility of the research. To eliminate this bias, the experiment should have some form of an anonymous process, such as not telling the subjects why they are keeping a sleep journal.
- Confounding Variables. In this experiment, there could be many confounding variables that could affect their sleep which could affect their mood. These confounding variables could include stress and environmental factors (such as the noise level in the dorms, the temperature of the room, etc.). To further explain, the variable of stress and its impact on sleep can be examined in an article by Leggett, Burgard, and Zivin (2016). In this article, it states that those who have more stress in their lives have more restless sleep than those who stress less (Leggett et al., 2016). This stress could be caused by personal drama, homework, social life, etc. The restlessness in sleep caused by stress could affect the quality of sleep which could potentially affect your mood. The environmental variable (noise level of dorms, the temperature of the room, etc.) can also affect the quality of sleep you receive which then effects your mood. If the noise is too loud it can prevent people from falling asleep at appropriate times and if the room is too hot or cold, it can cause people to stay up due to lack of being comfortable. To fix these issues, the subjects could do some type of activity to alleviate their stress levels. To combat any potential noise issues the subjects could sleep with a fan to help drown out the sound and the fan could also help with any temperature issues.
- Mishaps during the day. Another potential issue could include if something happened to the subject during the day that affected their mood. For example, if the subject spilled their coffee, if the subject got a bad test score, if the subject broke their laptop, etc. All of these theoretical scenarios could definitely affect their mood. If this happens, and they answer any questions administered to them through this experiment, these mishaps could affect our data. To prevent this, there has to be some instruction on recording their mood during the day overall and looking past any unfortunate mishaps.
References
- Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S. M., Alessi, C., Bruni, O., Doncarlos, L., . . . Hillard, P. J. (2015). National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: Methodology and results summary. Sleep Health,1(1), 40-43. doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010
- Leggett, A., Burgard, S., Zivin, K; The Impact of Sleep Disturbance on the Association Between Stressful Life Events and Depressive Symptoms, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 January 2016, Pages 118-128, https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbv072
- Ohlmann, K. K., & O’Sullivan, M. I. (2009). The Costs of Short Sleep. AAOHN JOURNAL, 57(9), 381-385. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/10.3928/08910162-20090817-02
- O’Leary, K., Bylsma, L.M., & Rottenberg, J. (2017) Why might poor sleep quality lead to depression? A role for emotion regulation, Cognition and Emotion, 31:8, 1698-1706, DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2016.1247035
- Peleg, M., Carluccio, C., & DSW. (2012, January 28). Co-Existing Psychological Factors. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/treatments/psychological/co-existing-psychological-factors
- Shuttleworth, M. (2009, February 5). Research Bias. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from https://explorable.com/research-bias
- van Heugten – van der Kloet, D., Giesbrecht, T., & Merckelbach, H. (2015). Sleep loss increases dissociation and affects memory for emotional stimuli. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 47, 9-17. doi:10.1016/J.JBTEP.2014.11.002